Author Notes

Andrea Camilleri lives in Italy.

Andrea Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle, Sicily on September 6, 1925. He began his studies at Faculty of Literature in 1944 but never finished. He started to publish poems and short stories. He studied stage and film direction at the Silvio D'Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts from 1948 to 1950 and soon began work as a director and screen writer. Andrea Camilleri worked on several TV productions such as Inspector Maigret wirh Gino Cervi. In 1971 he returned to the Academy of Dramatic Arts holding the chair of Movie Direction and keeping it for 20 years. In 1978 he wrote his first novel - The Way Things Go which was followed by A Thread of Smoke in 1980. In 1992 he published The Hunting Season which turned out to be a best seller. In 1994 Andrea Camilleri published the first in a long series of novels - The Shape of Water which features the character Inspector Montalbano - a ficticious Sicilian detective in the police force of Vigata, an imaginary Sicilian town. The TV adaption of this book took off in popularity and Andrea Camilleri's home town was renamed Porto Empedocle Vigata. In 1998 he won the Nino Mortoglio International Book Award. He received an honorary degree from the University of Pisa in 2005.

Camilleri has worked as a television and theater director, as well as a screenwriter. In 1978 he wrote his first novel, Il Corso delle Cose. The Montalbano series, featuring the Sicilian detective Inspector Montalbano, is Camilleri's most famous work of fiction, and it has been adapted into a television series.

Camilleri won the Nino Martoglio International Book Award in 1998. He is considered to be one of Italy's greatest contemporary writers.